Twelvetone Technique
by snowbunnie13
Summary: "If a song is a story, in this technique it is a jumble of events, not even in the right order, but yet it still makes sense as a whole." AU.


Twelve-Tone Technique

…A…

I could safely say that living in the dorms, a giant brick building that housed four hundred students, was a bad idea. Next year I'm moving to an apartment! Maybe it would be quieter there. In general, though, college life really suited me. I liked the feeling of freedom, but at the same time I quickly fell into a routine. This schedule could be summarized as follows: class, eat, sleep, and repeat.

Wednesday was laundry day. It was the one tradition that didn't change from living at home to living here. I had always done my own laundry, so the transition was smoother from some of the other residents. The laundry room was tucked away in the basement of the dorm building, at the end of the hallway. The first time that I went there, I swore it was a dungeon, but lit with flickering light bulbs instead of torches of fire. I had learned quickly on Wednesday's they were all free, a rare occurrence.

I stuffed my last load of laundry into the dryer and pulled out my book to wait for it to be finished. Another good thing about the laundry room: no one was ever in there to distract me from my studies. As long as I could block out the rumblings of the machines, easily done with the use of headphones, I could read my textbooks with ease. The smell, however, I could not get used to; the soapy smell of the detergent and the slightly burnt odor of the dryers when used improperly did not mix well.

DING! I shot straight up. What was I doing? Oh, right, laundry. I was too focused on my Biology textbook, studying for the upcoming dissection lab. Ugh. I wasn't exactly looking forward to that class, despite my love for science, especially Biology.

I neatly folded my clothes in my basket, humming a tune that sounded familiar. What was it? Oh no…It was "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!" I'm going to kill stupid, drunken Black*Star . . . he had been singing that tune last night outside my door, if singing meant yelling.

_Twinkle, twinkle, little star,_

_How I wonder what you are._

_Up above the world so high,_

_Like a diamond in the sky._

_Twinkle, twinkle, little star,_

_How I wonder what you are!_

Grumbling to myself, I began to meander back to the stairway. Then I noticed a room that I hadn't before. A janitor's closet, perhaps? Curious, I peeked inside.

"Why is there a piano in the closet?" I muttered. It seemed like a weird room to put an instrument. The closet was hardly big enough to contain it in the first place! Moving closer, I noticed the dust collecting on the keys. It almost looked lonely. I began to sympathize with it; wishing someone would come in and at least clean it properly. An instrument as majestic as the piano should never go without care . . . not that it looked very majestic hidden away like this.

Hadn't anyone been in here before?

A long time ago, I was able to play. Mom taught me; she had been my elementary school music teacher and would give me extra lessons at home. Somewhere along the line, though, I had given up on my dream to be a pianist. Instead, I decided to go into pre-med. Why, I wasn't sure.

When had my dreams changed? I picked up my laundry basket and left the piano alone.

…Bb…

For a few Wednesdays afterward, I began to check on the Piano Room to see if anyone else had visited it. No one was ever in there, nor did I expect anyone to be. It was college. We were too busy; or claiming that we were. Busy with school (me) or making a mess (my neighbors). Once, one adventurous step outside of my room on an innocent trip to the bathroom revealed puddles of milkshake ooze of various colors.

By trudging through the waterfall of chocolate ice cream down the stairs, I reported them, but that only egged them on further. The next day a grocery cart was found lying outside the fire escape balcony.

One Wednesday, though, again as I began to drag my laundry basket down the hallway, I thought I heard something. It was coming from the Piano Room! Was someone actually in there? I looked in out of the corner of my eye.

Who was he? I thought I'd seen all of the residents here, but apparently not. I think I would have remembered that white hair. Was that even possible? He didn't look old enough for white hair.

I quit my musing about hair and also hoped that the piano player wouldn't notice me here. He seemed so focused on the sheet music in front of him that I didn't want to distract him.

He stirred. I scurried away from my hiding place. I couldn't find the courage to compliment him on his playing.

…B…

"Tsubaki! Tsubaki! Tsubaki!" I yelled as I flung open the door to my small dorm room that I shared with her. I was being dramatic, yes, but this was big news.

"What? What? What?" My roommate looked up from her work pleasantly, tossing back her black hair. Tsubaki could never do anything angrily. Even her yell to get our neighbors to quiet down was calm and collected. She actually had to say it twice before the partiers outside even had a chance to hear her. I had to intervene.

"There was a _guy—"_

Tsubaki laughed. "Oh good! Maka found someone! I knew this day would come!"

"What? No!" I immediately denied. As much as the music was beautiful, the hair intimidated me a little. "There was a guy playing the piano! Y'know, the one I told you about in the closet?"

We raced down the stairs to see if he was still there, but it was too late. He had already disappeared.

…C…

It soon became another habit to sit outside the Piano Room when he played, which turned out to synchronize with my laundry day schedule. Every time as I was waiting for the dryer, I would sit outside of the Piano Room (as I was too nervous to actually enter) and listen to him play.

He practiced hard, I figured, by the way he wouldn't pause and take a break, but he also had a quick temper. One misstep on the keys and I would hear a slight curse or growl and he would start all over. Personally, it never sounded like a mistake to me, but I didn't know what song he was playing; it was completely foreign to me. The time passed by so quickly.

Just when I thought I'd come in and say hello, I was struck speechless on how beautiful the music was.

…C#…

"_These are the notes of the musical scale, Maka." Mom patiently taught, "They are: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Each key on the piano represents a different letter."_

"_What about the black keys? Are those numbers instead of letters or what?"_

"_Those are the in-between keys, the sharps and flats. A-flat, B-flat, C-sharp, E-flat, and F-sharp. You don't have to worry about those yet. Let's just start with the white keys."_

_I touched one of the keys experimentally; a typical child thing to do. "It's not sharp! You're lying, Mom!"_

_She laughed. "It's not _really _sharp, darling. It's just a name."_

"_But why'd they name it sharp if it isn't sharp?"_

"_Who knows? Now. This is the first song I will teach you. You should recognize it." She pressed the keys down in a familiar melody, one that I knew well. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star…" _

…D…

He was playing a new song. A very strange, dark new song. Whereas his previous songs was light and happy, this one was so _wrong _it was almost jarring. None of the notes seemed to match up, yet it still sounded_ together, _like it wasn't just hitting random piano keys.

There was a name for this, I vaguely thought; it was a technique of sorts that wasn't very popular but once heard, was never forgotten. Except by me, of course. Could I blame this on studying for my biology test too much?

The music sounded…angry. It felt like it was somehow forcing itself out of the pianist's fingers. He was merely a medium in this situation, a tool. I wondered if he could sense it too.

…Eb…

My computer mouse was not on what it was supposed to be. I should be studying right now. But no, I was too busy thinking about that piano song and how there was a word for what kind of music that was, but it was on the tip of my tongue, the very edge of my brain. After scrambling throughout my entire memory base, I gave up and used the internet.

…E…

_Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. The technique is a means of ensuring that all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any through the use of tone rows, an ordering of the twelve pitches. All twelve notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key._

…F…

I was looking forward to tomorrow, another Wednesday. Now I had figured out what kind of music the pianist was playing, I wanted to hear more. More of the twelve-tone technique.

When I told Tsubaki about this, she laughed, amused. She still thought I was in love with this guy. Again she insisted I ask his name so I wouldn't have to resort to calling him "The Piano Guy."

…F#…

He wasn't there. The one day that I really wanted to see him he was missing!

Disappointed, I walked over to the empty piano and pushed a few keys down in a random order. Afterword, I felt like a small child who had touched something that she wasn't supposed to. Guilty, I ran off and hoped that no one noticed.

…G…

"You have to go talk to him." My roommate pressed as I gathered my laundry basket. "Compliment him or something. Ask him his name, at least."

"But I'll sound like a creeper!" I protested. Well, now that I thought about it, I practically was his stalker. I liked to think of myself as a groupie and a fan.

"Bring your laundry, then. You just heard him in passing." She suggested, and turned more serious, "You know if you don't, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Tomorrow's the last Wednesday of the year. You're moving out this weekend, remember?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I have to try."

…G#…

I was a little late, but it wasn't my fault. Black*Star had ruined one of the dryers, so I had to wait longer for the load to dry. Well, I could easily assume it was Black*Star; this wouldn't be the first time he would have broken appliances. Damn. It was almost too late when I finally neared the doorway, setting my basket down.

I gulped a large breath of air and took a step into the Piano Room.

"This one's your song," he said, not looking back at me, and played. It was the same song as always, twelve different tones played in a mixture of ways, a mixture of feelings. Whereas other songs focus on one particular emotion, this song was furious and ecstatic and depressing all at the same time.

The pianist played with noticeably higher precision; it was obvious that after all this practice, he had mastered it. One last perfect note and he finally turned around. A smirk. "It's called Wednesday, since I know that there's at least one day of the week I will have an audience."

"Oh—oh," I stuttered. "Hey, you knew I was there the whole time?!"

"I have my sources," he said simply. "I didn't realize you liked it so much."

"Of course I do! It's beautiful!" _Beautiful _didn't really cut it. It was so much more. "I'm Maka, by the way," I offered to shake his hand. It felt like shaking a celebrity's hand.

"Soul," he introduced, and then commented, "Not many people think the Twelve-Tone technique is beautiful."

"It's weird, but beautiful all the same," I explained.

"This technique…" Soul played a few high notes, "If a song is a story, in this technique it is a jumble of events, not even in the right order, but yet it still makes sense as a whole."

A/n: this story was originally wrote as a fan fic, changed into a short story for fiction writing class, then changed back into fan fic. I thought it turned out pretty good! Of course, I did have to change a few names in the version I turned in. Picture this:

Maka = Makayla Barn (hahaha it's just like Maka Albarn except for a y tucked in there)

Tsubaki = Rose (because Tsubaki means camellia, a flower, right? I couldn't thing of a last name)

Black*Star = Brett Night (Brett starts with B and stars are out at night!)

Soul = Evan Loster (Evan for Evans, of course, and then I created something with some other letters of his name. Also, he had dreadlocks instead of white hair…random, I know!)

The weird part was that the other students in my class, as they reviewed my story, all thought Maka's mom died or something. Probably because I said she lived with her dad in version one and she had all these flashbacks about her mom…weird.

This story was also inspired by my dorm. There _is_ an actual piano near the laundry room. Cool, huh? The 12 tone technique was something that I learned in music class. I thought it might be something Soul might play. Also, didja figure out the story break up letters? HAHAHA I'm so funny! ^_^

9


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